A great way to attend IFFLA 2015 is with one of our Festival Passes. There are four passes available this year: All-Access Pass, Fest Pass, Silk Pass and Silver Pass. Visit our website to learn more about the various perks of each type of Pass.

One of the highlights of the All-Access Pass is being able to attend our Galas. The festival kicks off with Opening Night Gala HARAAMKHOR, a coming-of-age tale directed by Shlok Sharma. It stars Nawazuddin Siddiqui, and is produced by Anurag Kashyap (GANGS OF WASSEYPUR) and Guneet Monga (THE LUNCHBOX).

The Arab American Women’s Business Council (AAWBC), founded in 2007 as a 501c3 nonprofit professional organization, elected Renée Ahee as its first chief executive officer, effective March 15, 2015. Ahee is a co-founder of the organization, whose mission is to bring together Arab American business women of diverse disciplines and industries and to provide opportunities for them to grow professionally and to grow their business through leadership, education, scholarship, internship and cultural programs. She has been a member of the board of directors since its inception.

BERKELEY, Calif. – Undocumented immigrants’ ability to stay healthy might come down to a matter of luck. That’s one of the findings that emerged from a study released this week by The Greenlining Institute, a national research and advocacy organization.

Prohibitive costs, language barriers, fear of outing themselves as undocumented and a perceived lack of cultural competency among health care providers were among the reasons undocumented immigrants gave for not seeking timely medical care when they fell sick.

Editor’s Note: Univision’s dismissal of Rodner Figueroa following a racist remark he made about First Lady Michelle Obama has sparked a series of commentaries in the Spanish-language press about racism in the Latino community. In this editorial in today’s La Opinión, editors write that unfortunately, racism and classism are alive and well in the Hispanic community.

Univision host Rodner Figueroa’s comment about First Lady Michelle Obama rightfully caused a commotion around the topic of racism and discrimination among the Latino community, who are sometimes both victims and perpetrators.

When the hashtag #IfTheyGunnedMeDown landed on the front page of the New York Times last year, it was a game-changing moment in the evolution of black Twitter, particularly in how social media was forcing mainstream news media to look at the way they portrayed African Americans.

The defendants in a scheme that targeted Spanish-speaking consumers have been banned from telemarketing and selling weight-loss products under a new settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

The settlement agreement, released March 2, comes on the heels of the FTC’s annual fraud report, which cited phone scams as one of the leading means of fraud nationwide. The agency received more than 1.5 million fraud-related complaints totaling more than $1.7 billion in 2014. Of the 46% who reported a specific method of fraudulent contact, 54% said they were initially contacted by phone. The annual report was released February 27.

IFFLA is widely recognized as the premiere showcase for groundbreaking Indian cinema globally. Celebrating its 13th year, IFFLA will run April 8-12 at ArcLight Hollywood in Los Angeles, the festival’s home since its inception. Festival Passes and Gala tickets are currently on sale on the festival’s website. Individual screening tickets go on sale March 20.

All of us have fears—especially when it comes to taking risks in our professional and personal lives. In fact, it’s been said that FEAR stands for “Forget Everything And Run,” which is a logical reaction given that, by definition, risk is “the possibility of suffering harm or loss,” and involves “uncertain danger.”

One day I was eating dinner at the table with my family and my mom started to talk about the time she was my age, about the school she went to in Cameroon and how she worked all the way through college. She started off with this, “When I was your age, I did not wear the braids you had, I had to have my head shaved…” As she went on through her talk all I kept telling myself, “This is it. I have a few months and I am headed off to college.”

A new scam targeting immigrants has gotten the attention of Uncle Sam.

Health advocates are concerned that tax preparers have been misinforming, and some even outright scamming, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) beneficiaries by making them pay a penalty for not having health insurance. On Wednesday, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) released a statement clarifying that there is no such penalty for undocumented immigrants or for DACA recipients. DACA is a program announced by President Obama in 2012 that gives temporary protection against deportation to undocumented immigrants who came to this country as children.